Occasionally, an operator or the third party service provider provides the same service to a plurality of devices. For example, an electric power company may send simultaneously, to electric meters distributed in a certain area, a request to transmit the amount of electricity used to a company server. Additionally, in case a specific area has enough network resources, the operator may transmit simultaneously data for software upgrade to a plurality of devices. In this case, most services do not charge users, but make the operator or service provider pay for use of data.
Therefore, for such transmission, there is a discussion about grouping many devices, creating a bearer shared in a group, and saving network resources. Further, a network resource use for such a service needs to be handled differently from that for a normal user service. In an EPS (Evolved Packet System) concerned with this invention, a scheme of allocating such a group to an APN (Access Point Name) has been discussed. Namely, when a group application is executed, a device performs a connection with the APN for the relevant group.
However, one device may belong to two or more groups. For example, a certain device may belong to both a group managed by an electric power company and a group managed to update software by an operator. In this case, an electric power company server can be accessed by “electric power company APN”, and an operator software update server can be accessed by “operator dedicated APN”. Therefore, when respective group applications are executed at the same time, the device establishes a PDN (Packet Data Network) connection with “electric power company APN” and also establishes an additional PDN connection with “operator dedicated APN”. In other words, two IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are allocated for a group service.
Accordingly, in case of managing a separate group for each APN, an operator has difficulty in managing network resources. Thus, needed is a scheme of using a single group APN to provide a service to a device belonging to a plurality of groups. Additionally, the amount of network resources used for such a group service needs to be handled differently from the amount of resources used in case a user subscribes for a non-group service (e.g., UE-AMBR (Aggregate Maximum Bit Rate)).